In the field of landscape painting, Irish painters of the eighteenth century were outstanding and several artists, including William Ashford, George Barrett and the brothers Thomas Roberts and Thomas Sautelle Roberts painted landscapes that were on a par with those painted by their contemporaries in other European countries. It was from the middle of the eighteenth century that landscape painting developed in Ireland and it developed out of a tradition of topographical painting that went back to the beginning of the century. The painters mentioned above painted real as well as imaginary views and Ashford, Barrett and Thomas Sautelle Roberts are all represented in this book by topographical paintings of Dublin, Powerscourt Waterfall and County Waterford respectively. The topographical artist most associated with Ireland in the eighteenth century is James Malton and the National Gallery of Ireland is fortunate in possessing several of the original watercolours for his famous engraved views of Dublin and a number of these are included among Fifty Views of Ireland. In the nineteenth century, perhaps the most important Irish topographical painter was George Petrie. Petrie was an archaeologist, one of the first in Ireland, and he wrote an important work on Irish Round Towers as well as making countless drawings of the countryside which were engraved and used as illustrations to various guidebooks. The National Gallery of Ireland has a number of his watercolours all of which are very fine and of exceptional interest and a number of them are here reproduced. Fifty Views of Ireland also includes work by lesser known painters such as Chaigneau, Turner de Lond and Samuel Woolley, and the views represented show scenes in most counties of Ireland.
Illustrated in Full Colour